In the latter part of the eighteenth century, an American gentleman married in England an English lady of some wealth. They brought to America with them in a sailing-vessel, as part of the bride’s wedding-outfit, a gayly painted, richly mounted travelling-coach. In this great coach they rode in grand style with four post-horses from Boston to Albany, New York, and Philadelphia, and back to the little town in Narragansett, which was ever after their home. In due time they died, and left to their only son, a physician, all their worldly goods, including the old coach, and the far less desirable inheritance of a high and stubborn temper, and a firm and deep-seated veneration for English customs, manners, traditions, and productions, which would be worthy an Anglomaniac of the present day. He, however, made one unfortunate and incomprehensible deviation from his Anglo-worship when he married an American wife. As years went on, the Doctor grew more and more overbearing and dictatorial, especially in his household (as some English husbands are also said to be), and in the matter of food and of cooking--those unfortunate hobbies of an ill-tempered man--he took, perhaps, the most violent stand. Never did any other wife have to hear so often the words, “as my mother used to cook it,” and “they don’t do it so in England,” or have to listen so frequently to acrimonious expressions of dislike of American cooks and cooking. Pork and beans, “cracker johnny-cake,” Indian-pudding, even the purely Dutch dough-nuts were banished from his board; for not only did he refuse to eat these New England dishes himself, but would not let his wife and daughters, either. He also became unjust enough bumptiously to denounce as “American” and “taboo” any food (no matter of what nationality) which did not suit his fancy or which chanced to disagree with him. On an unlucky day, having eaten too greedily of mince-pie (for he had a fine English appetite), he passed his universal banishing dictum on that darling of New England hearts and stomachs--_the pie_. From thenceforth on feast-days only English plum-pudding was served for dessert. To the New England wife, accustomed to see at least _four_ kinds of pie offered to “company,” if one made pretence even of being truly hospitable and housewifely, the lonely pudding was a great and almost unbearable source of grief and mortification, and many a struggle did she make (trying to imitate her forefathers of old) against the English yoke, but in vain; pieless and barren for years was her table. But reinforcing troops at last came to her rescue; for three daughters were grown, and, brave and strong with youth, they dared to rebel more openly and recklessly than their browbeaten mother.